Another week has passed and another undefeated college football team has fallen. The Crimson Tide of Alabama ended Mississippi State’s quest for perfection this week, leaving no SEC teams undefeated. The Florida State Seminoles were nearly in the same boat as Mississippi State, but pulled out a tough win against their rivals Miami. Leaving just one undefeated team in college football — well, two, if you count Marshall — and that is the defending BCS National Champion Seminoles.

Every week a larger and larger cry is made to remove Florida State from the top four teams that would eventually be in the college football playoff at the end of the season.

There seem to be plenty of reasons why the Seminoles shouldn’t make the playoff, so to counter that I would like to give some reasons why they should.

Reason number 1: they simply know how to win football games. A lot of the arguments being made are that Florida State simply isn’t good enough to compete with the teams in the SEC and other big time non-SEC title contenders. The idea here is that they aren’t talented enough nor capable of defeating some of these teams.

I am not going to say that the Seminoles would beat one of the top SEC teams or other top teams like Oregon and TCU, I will, however, say that they most certainly could. It is obvious that this year’s Florida State team is not nearly as big, fast and flat out talented as the team they had last year, but at the end of the day they continue to win football games.

Sure, they play in a weaker conference and have some really close games with some bad teams, but they are still undefeated and are currently running a 26-game winning streak — that is something that no other team in the country can say. In fact, they haven’t lost a game since November 24, 2012 — that’s almost two years!

Reason number 2: they are the defending champions. This one is simple, they won the title last year and since then no one has been able to knock them off of their throne. They have had some tough games but they have yet to fall and still deserve the opportunity to defend their title against teams that wish to take it from them (assuming they win out, of course).

Reason number 3: assuming they win the ACC, they will be champions of their conference. This one is tricky simply because there are more conferences than places in the playoff bracket. The playoff should be eight teams with the Power 5 conferences (SEC, ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and Big 10) having their champions all get automatic bids and the last three spots getting filled by the highest ranked teams in the country — but that is another topic for another day.

But here is the deal, if they finish undefeated and win their conference, they deserve to be in the playoff. Simple as that, now, let’s get to the final reason.

Reason number 4: Jameis Winston. You don’t have to like him, but you certainly have to acknowledge his skill on the field. He has had his fair share of questionable actions off the field, but when he is on the field he is simply a dangerous player. He has yet to lose a game as a starter, continues to lead his team to victories in tough games and, oh yeah, he is also a Heisman Trophy winner.

Winston has his issues, but he — just like his team — knows how to win football games. If the Seminoles are down late in a game you can be sure that Winston will have a good shot to lead them back.

Florida State still has to win out, should they do that there isn’t any reason why they aren’t selected to play in the playoff. I’m not going to say that they will win another title, but as it stands, you can’t keep them out.

Tyler Rollason is a Winder-Barrow High School graduate and mass communications major at the University of West Georgia. He writes a weekly sports column for the Barrow Journal. You can e-mail comments about this column to tyrollason@yahoo.com.

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